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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941414">lethe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline'>TomBowline</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Comfort Sex, Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV James Fitzjames, Stewardship With Benefits, background Bridgens/Peglar, vague tinges of Gender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:02:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,842</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941414</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Sir John's death, James has been tense and sleepless. Mr Bridgens endeavors to provide a balm. </p><p>Fill for Rarepair Week day three, “Frozen in”.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Bridgens/James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Terror Rarepair Week 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>lethe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>James felt tight all over. </p><p>It had been seven days since Sir John. Seven days since he had last wept, and the memory burned like a fraying rope around his heart, shameful, childish. Seven days since he had slept much at all. </p><p>He felt locked up inside himself, stretched thin over the roil of ugly grief that threatened to burst forth at the worst of moments. Inevitably, he thought, it would claw its way out and he would be humiliated - utterly, irretrievably. It was only a matter of when. </p><p>He peered at himself in his spotty little mirror; wondered if it would be too much to ask Bridgens to shave him morning and evening, for the unsightly dark shadow that now adorned his cheeks would scratch and scrape terribly at his skin as he tried hour on hour to sleep. Too much, he decided, too vain, too eminently mockable. </p><p>Bridgens himself, having undressed James’ brittle body and washed his blotchy face and helped him into his thin-worn nightshirt with the tenderest of care, was now making to turn the lamp out and leave. “Is there anything else you require, sir?”</p><p>James rubbed a hand over his face and made a sound he would not own to. “You may as well leave the lamp on, Bridgens. I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.”</p><p>Bridgens paused by the door; turned to face James, barely a pace from him. His face, often somber, was now utterly and horribly morose - creased over on itself in worry and grief. James could hardly stand it; he looked away, into the shadowed corner where the bulkhead met the wall. </p><p>When Bridgens spoke at last his voice was calm and steady - but it was rather a put-on steadiness, such as one might use to speak to a frantic animal. “If I might suggest— a bit of special care might do you good, Commander.”</p><p>James knew what it was he referred to - they had done it before, intermittently, in years previous. Mostly, when he was a bright young lieutenant eager to learn and Bridgens was a handsome, kindly man willing to teach. Bridgens was still handsome, still kindly, still willing, but James had thought - well. He’d deduced, with very little bitterness in his mind as he contemplated it, that Bridgens had a new bright young thing to teach the sweetnesses of the world to. It was good, would be good for him: there was no romantic attachment to speak of between Bridgens and himself, and the both of them knew that even if there was it could not hold up to time and society. It would be good for him to have someone who could be free. Relatively speaking.</p><p>“I—” James frowned. He <em> wanted, </em> that was the trouble. He wanted strong arms and a deep voice, he wanted the comforting familiarity of mingled authority and indulgence, he wanted to come apart in a sense more pleasurable than the current awful unraveling. But it would be selfish, when Bridgens was otherwise engaged. He would not take advantage of perceived obligation. “I do not wish to cause you discomfort. Or to disrupt any other...attachment you have formed.”</p><p>Bridgens was facing him toe-to-toe now, and taking liberties: a warm hand on James’ arm, shaking him slightly. James felt he might fly apart. “You are an excellent young man, Commander Fitzjames,” he said, in that steady schoolmaster voice of his. “It brings me no discomfort to serve you. Nor would it bring my <em> other attachment </em> any grief to know I had done.”</p><p>With that benediction James’ resistance dissolved fully. He let himself be led to his bunk, bent over the rail; then, this position apparently reconsidered, he was nudged up and onto his knees. Head and shoulders dropped into the pillows, eyes fluttering shut; feeling flayed open and wound up at once. His nightshirt, put onto him so gently, had its tails swept upwards with equal care; his long drawers and smallclothes were tugged down and off. Hands, lovely hands, sturdy hands roughened by work and smoothened by other work, stroked down the backs of his thighs soothingly before disappearing to parts unknown and returning wet with oil to ease their way into his fundament. James could not see Bridgens’ face, but he could sense the warmth of the man where he was stood by the bunk, and he felt it like the very sun. So much, after so little. He was beginning to learn that that was the way of things here.</p><p>He felt horribly unyielding, frozen stock-still and frangible, but Bridgens was perfect in his patience; he worked his way in slowly, gently, one broad finger and then two, stroking his rim and then pushing, until James was slack and clutching and had oil dripping down his thigh. With the practiced ease of a master craftsman Bridgens located his prostate and began a calamitous, insistent rhythm of strokes and rubs; James’ cock twitched, heavy and useless beneath him, and there was absolution in letting the discomfort build to pain as it went ignored. </p><p>The tears began quickly and silently. They leaked from his eyes without his bidding, a mirror of what dripped from his prick; a stain on the pillow and a stain on the sheets, and beside him the man who would have to clean the whole mess was making little soothing sounds and stroking up James’ bared back with his free arm. Sleeve rolled up, weather-worn skin and soft muscle, wiry hair overtop, the arms that had cared for James so often and so long. The soothing did not stop the crying, but James did not think it was meant to; either way, it felt necessary, like its own sort of release, like a bloodletting. He was certain Bridgens would - if not <em> understand, </em> then certainly not reproach him for it. It was a rare thing and a precious one, that certainty. </p><p>When he came the first time - dry like a blighted land, shivering taut - something shook loose within him and the trickle of silent tears burst into wild, ragged sobs. The first cry was sudden, clawing its way up his throat like bile from a gut-punch; the rest he muffled, hot and suffocating and nearly screaming, in the flat little pillow he had been clutching onto for dear life. There was a pause, an inquiry as to whether he would like to stop - its precise words were lost to him, but its deep and gentle tone sunk into his flesh like butter onto hot bread. He declined the offer of cessation - more, he felt, was needed. The infection had to be drawn out before it could be healed from. </p><p>The second round he spent thinking, <em> John, John, John, </em> plaintive like a prayer, like a plea, <em> come back, come back. Love me. </em> He might even have gasped it aloud - if he did, Bridgens only stroked through his hair and kept on at him, coaxing the pleasure from his body in nonjudgmental silence. The third round he spent feeling wretchedly guilty, peering around with wide eyes, feeling the hands that stretched him open and the arms that held him in place and the heat of the body beside him and thinking, <em> Bridgens, Bridgens, John Bridgens, dear Bridgens, </em> to claw himself back to reality. </p><p>After the fourth shuddering, rolling, drooling crisis he lost count - he might have an entire hand up him by now and not know it, he thought at one bleary point, and the thought sharpened briefly into a savage hunger. By the time he got himself back to body parts from the soup of sensation he’d been swimming in, by the time he found he was still speared on the same three capable fingers as ever, the hunger had dulled and crumbled away like a wilted flower. <em> Nothing blooms here, </em> he thought, on some vague track of funeral bouquets, and then, somewhat wildly, <em> nothing but me. </em> For here he was, blossomed open for the special care of his steward, who had coaxed him open to what must be an unseemly gape, who was stroking over the spot within him that would make him clench and pulse and then open up further. No fruit, at least, would come of him - nothing would grow inside him, nothing of the future was to be gleaned from his body. He had no cunt and no womb to provide; only a great ugly cock and an unseemly demanding arsehole and a belly full of guts that seemed to shrink and cower even now. Whatever wretched thing he was, he was the last one.  </p><p>Eventually it was too much. Eventually he twitched and twisted away, had to bite back on howls for his neglected cock, buried his face in the bed and hoped Bridgens understood what he needed next. And yes, of course, here was that broad oiled hand over his wretched red prick, tugging expertly. It was, after all, Bridgens’ job to know what James needed. </p><p>In the absence of a hand to fill it, James’ hole clenched and fluttered and prevented him from finding an end of it all. He was given to understand that he was a rare creature, he who would rather have something up him than not when he was trying to spend; in an assignation, it beguiled, but alone it was only inconvenient. Again, however, Bridgens knew: the next moment, there was a hand still on James’ prick and a face pressed close in against his fundament. Like a kiss of the most obscene sort, the scrape of Bridgens’ whiskers gave way to the softness of his lips and tongue, and the very <em> knowledge </em> of it - the burning immediate heat of the act, the fact of its happening - sent James seizing and spurting off at last. </p><p>He came for what felt like minutes: into Bridgens’ palm, onto the sheets, droplets on his own belly and thighs and even on his chin. When it was over his limbs were loose as old rope and wobbly as old boards but he felt raw like a new thing. He considered the horror of a baby bird, naked and translucent-skinned, uncaringly vulnerable and desperate for sustenance. Then he dropped to the mattress and curled up drowsy around himself - an old instinct, the oldest, to protect his soft and painful parts - and ceased to consider. </p><p>James was reminded again, as Bridgens ran a damp towel over him like he was an anointed saint or a man on his deathbed, of being bled - he felt that he had expelled something vile from himself, something needful and harrowing. He was given a fresh pillowcase and counterpane and nightshirt; he was dressed again in his underthings; he was nudged once more to bed and given a tender stroke to his aching forehead like he was a sick child. He was put back together. </p><p>Bridgens still looked melancholy when he turned the lamp out at last to leave, but he seemed more at ease than he had been. James suspected that the two of them were feeling much the same way.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Currently waiting for my "originator of a ship tag" commemorative pin to arrive in the mail. Get on it, OTW.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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